[poll] Fire Realism Mod

[infamousjbe 592]

Been working on a mod that increases random fires throughout the entire city, which got me to thinking if there are still others that would enjoy this as well.

 

After doing some searching through ST/SC4D for related threads, seems this topic to be a bit taboo. From what I gather, about 2/3 rather dislike fires, but a handful of those (like me) that would like more action.

 

Most of the information I came across has been from the years past and not so pertinent to the present. Don't really know if there are many left that would enjoy the increased amount of fires.

 

This poll is to help me decide whether to bother with packaging up a mod, just creating a tut for others to DIY, or there's just not enough reason for me to bother other than for myself. 

 

Some reasoning behind the madness, is the craving for more "realism" in the simulation. History is riddled with disaster stories about fires vs cities. To me, this is sort of pivotal to a "natural" progression of a city. Even landmarks are not safe from disasters, unfortunately..but them's the facts of life.

 

With fire comes the opportunity for growth. You ever wonder where you're going to put that new building in your city, well fires will definitely give you that opportunity.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you want an action game, play something else.

  Edited July 19, 2013 by CaptCity  

[infamousjbe 592]

If you want an action game, play something else.

This mod has nothing to do with "action".. it has more to do with actual city development. Natural disasters are large part of most cities histories. I'm just trying to implement some of that realism in the game. It's a bit ridiculous that you can stifle fires completely with the way fire stations are set up. Or you have to choose where you want a fire to start, that's lame IMO. I prefer more random fires anywhere at anytime. 

 

My main goal (personal preference) is to have a fire about every 20-30mins on turtle speed. This allows time to develop the city while increasing the fires slightly, but also allowing the fire's locations to be completely random. (ie: Even the buildings right across the street from the station can ignite if the factors are inline).

 

Now, if you want to take a break from building for a while and fight some fires, just switch to cheetah. Fires comes almost back to back when running that speed. 

 

I personally enjoy riding along with my dispatched fire fighters and watching them "fight" the fire. The excitement that comes from the gamble of saving or losing the building/s that burning. 

 

Plus, if you want to create a low wealth area, allow the collapsed building to sit for a while and bring down the property value.

 

So in others words, if you like the sterile SC4 with no disasters, keep playing it the way you want. For those who want more realism, this mod will be for us.

  Edited July 19, 2013 by CaptCity  

[AcronShinra 60]

[Send to disaster] button is one of most unused buttons in game. Just plop stations and other civics around, and you won't ever need to send any vehicle anywhere. I wish there'd be option for muuuuuuuuuuch often occurrences of such random semi-disasters.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I don't mind the fires themselves (they're realistic), but it's mind-numbingly boring and unnerving to direct your fire trucks to the fire, and so fires ultimately disturb gameplay rather than enriching it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The disasters in this game are rather juvenile.  If you could have delegated response to them, it would be more useful.  They "mayor" doesn't dispatch either police nor EM service in an ordinary situation.  These items are delegated to the appropriate part of the civil organization.  I prefer a more executive role for the "mayor".

[Turjan 1,048]

I don't mind the fires themselves (they're realistic), but it's mind-numbingly boring and unnerving to direct your fire trucks to the fire, and so fires ultimately disturb gameplay rather than enriching it.

 

Yup. I see the fires more as a reminder that there's a gap in my service net, which is fine. I don't need them in my normal game.

 

Then again, I guess it could be neat to have some big fire go on once in a while, but that's what the disaster buttons are for. And there, I have mostly used meteor strikes or volcanoes, as they can leave an interesting terrain alteration behind which can make the city look more interesting afterwards.

 

This doesn't mean the idea to develop a city with help of random fires is a bad idea. I could see that something like a fire every 20-50 years, building in one style beforehand and changing style afterwards, would lead to some neat "old town" -> "new town" effect. That doesn't sound like the proposed mod, though.

[infamousjbe 592]

[Send to disaster] button is one of most unused buttons in game. Just plop stations and other civics around, and you won't ever need to send any vehicle anywhere. I wish there'd be option for muuuuuuuuuuch often occurrences of such random semi-disasters.

That's exactly what this mod is doing, but only with fires. Have not delved into the possibility of allow the some of the other disasters to be randomly activated.

 

I've modded a fire station to allow fires within it's radius, but at the same time slightly increasing the radius, 1. to allow for a few less stations (budget ease), & 2. to keep the advisers satisfied with city coverage. I didn't want this mod to have any negative effect on your over all mayor rating. Doing my best to keep the games core structure intact while creating more realistic fire scenarios.

 

Another thing I've noticed with the increased fires, when some of the residential fires broke out, would also stir up riots. This meant having to dispatch the police force as well as the fire fighters. So this mod increases two factors for ya.

 

I've occasionally enjoyed playing in cheetah and basically being a fire fighter. Something about riding along and watching the Sim fire fighters fighting the fire increases the immersion with my cities. I feel a bit of sadness to watch a neighborhood block suddenly burn down and those Sims lose everything. It's even humorous to under fund the stations to the point when the fire fighters start acting like the 3 Stooges. Fumbling around, spraying the hose this way and that.

 

 

Since fires seem to be the only one that do trigger randomly, the other disasters might not be able to work in such a way. I will be trying to look into it once finished with this fire mod.

 

 

 

I don't mind the fires themselves (they're realistic), but it's mind-numbingly boring and unnerving to direct your fire trucks to the fire, and so fires ultimately disturb gameplay rather than enriching it.

The fires themselves CAN be realistic, but it's actually the fire stations that muck it all up. The fire station's "protection" does indeed stifle fires to a point that it's nearly impossible to have a fire within the coverage area. There's nothing realistic about that. That's why in order to achieve the realism, both the global fire exemplars and fire stations have to be modded.

 

I also agree that it can be disturbing at times with the "snap-to" switched on. Just last night was trying to delete a section and ended up deleting half the city. :/   But, as long as you save periodically (like you should, or use the launcher/alarm), there's no real harm done that reloading the city wouldn't fix. Now, if the snap occurs while you still have the button held, it's easy to just press the 'esc' button to release what ever it is you're about to do an thus, double disaster is averted. I've always found it weird that it wouldn't automatically release the button with jumping to the disaster. Or you can just turn off the 'snap-to' and use it when the game automatically pauses. But like with some mods, this does have a slight drawback with the 'snap-to' feature coupled with the disasters.

 

The disasters in this game are rather juvenile.  If you could have delegated response to them, it would be more useful.  They "mayor" doesn't dispatch either police nor EM service in an ordinary situation.  These items are delegated to the appropriate part of the civil organization.  I prefer a more executive role for the "mayor".

Well hey, nothings perfects. It is strange that you're forced to HAVE to dispatch rather than it being automatically. The snap-to should be only if you wanted to watch the action in progress. That would have been much more enjoyable, but unfortunately we don't have that luxury. So what I'm really forced to do, is work with what I've got to try and make it better for some, not all. 

 

As an advocate of "playing your own style" when it comes to SC4, you might understand why I was slightly put back by your first response. Coming from someone that usually has invaluable information, or criticism, it was strange to read such a blatant response. Maybe if it was coming from some fly by night poster it wouldn't have stung so much, but not from you my good sir.

 

Now, just to reiterate, this mod is not for the faint at heart. If you don't like anything to do with fires, then this thread/mod is not for you, other than to vote. If you want a bit more realism with your fires, then please jump in the pit an speak up.

[infamousjbe 592]

Yup. I see the fires more as a reminder that there's a gap in my service net, which is fine. I don't need them in my normal game.

 

 

I believe that's how most of us have been trained to play this game over the past10 years. I'm now trying to introduce a more difficult but yet strategical element to the game that make you think twice about the appropriate location for your fire stations.

 

 

Then again, I guess it could be neat to have some big fire go on once in a while, but that's what the disaster buttons are for.

I just don't have the heart to be pull the trigger when it comes the self started disasters. I'd rather be the mayor that puts out the fires, not the mayor that starts them too. Though this does sound like some kind of RL corrupt way of boosting your mayor ratings right before elections.

 

 

This doesn't mean the idea to develop a city with help of random fires is a bad idea. I could see that something like a fire every 20-50 years, building in one style beforehand and changing style afterwards, would lead to some neat "old town" -> "new town" effect. That doesn't sound like the proposed mod, though

20-50 years is a long time in RL play time. Since the clock stops every time you scroll, so if you move around a lot, you don't really progress much unless you play in cheetah. With my play style, 10 years can easily equal 1-3 hours depending on what I'm concentrating on in my cities. That's why in turtle, I'm shooting for 20-30 minutes. Which I feel is where I'm at now with the mod, but it's the spread that's a bit drastic in the residential neighborhoods. Just want to reel it back a skosh.

 

The mod causes the fires, it's the fires that allow the opportunity to create "old town" -> "new town" effect. Without a mod like this, it couldn't be done naturally, you'd have to manually create that look. I prefer the natural progress personally.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, everyone to his own taste.  If you looked you'll see I took the second choice.  I'm like everyone else more or less.  I believe that proactive prevention is better than reactive repair.

[timmie 988]

I have moved this topic to another forum, since it is about the creation of a mod for SC4. I have also changed the title to better reflect the contents of the thread.

 

-timmie

[Wiimeiser 436]

I think fire's reasonably balanced considering...

[Lot Creator 304]

Mod still on?

[infamousjbe 592]

Mod still on?

Sort of...

 

Have not been able to put much time towards SC4 in the last couple of days.

 

However, the mod itself is still being ironed out. There are factors that still need to be adjusted before it would be considered (IMO) completed. 

 

It's a bit of a slow process for me. Didn't know the first thing about modding till getting into this one. Since I needed to be taught everything I know so far about altering exemplars, and now my modding mentor has been missing in action for a month, it's become more of a trial an error process without having them to help.

 

Another thing I don't have the ability to do is test these adjustments on larger/older cities. I've only been back playing SC4 for about 2 months now and my region is still rather young (89K region pop).

 

I can say, I love that fires happen anywhere now, not just outside the fire station's radius of coverage. I've actually had the fire station itself catch fire (which is not impossible in RL).

 

The thing I don't like at the moment, the frequency needs to be cut back. It IS more of a distraction to developing the city, which is not what I want out of this mod. Think I went to radical with this at first because fires didn't happen enough with the default settings. What I didn't take into consideration is that the frequency itself was being stifled by the fire stations, but now that they are not, the natural frequency would increase. This meant increasing the frequency with the exemplar coupled with the ability to have fires ignite anywhere is a bit too much now. 

 

 

 

I can post the mod "As Is" here in the thread to try out and possibly help with some testing/criticism  OR can just post the proper fire station exemplar factors to adjust to allow the fires the ability to ignite anywhere....  If anyone would be interested?

[infamousjbe 592]

So just a slight update on the mod for those interested.

 

In my hast and ignorance to increase fires globally, I over shot the mark by way to much.

 

While I was figuring out how to mod the fire stations to allow fires anywhere, I was also messing with other fire exemplars learning what did what. This brought the breakouts to be a bit over the top. Even in turtle mode, it became more of a nuisance than realistic. 

 

However, now that my knowledge has caught up to my curiosity, the follies of my ways are being brought back in line. I didn't take in to count that, just by allowing fires to happen with the fire stations radius alone allow an "increase" in fire. The reason why fires start are still the same, but the fire stations was stifling the fires to a point of not being able to ignite under the coverage. Remove that coverage and things happen naturally. 

 

So the mod really comes down to modding the fire stations properly. So I have all the default fire stations modded properly and testing the frequency as it is at the moment. Still might have to adjust some of the factors that allow ignition to happen. 

 

Other factors that have been changed (in the name of realism):

 

Abandonment Multiplier. Reduce this amount. We all experience abandonment in our cities lifetime and didn't want things to get out of control during these periods.

 

Summer Time Multiplier. Increased just a bit. SC default didn't have any summer multiplier increase and in RL, fires do occur more often during summer, but not by much. Hence only increasing by a very small amount. 

 

Stage Time: Globally reduced these factors. IMO buildings could burn entirely too long before collapsing. Meaning, a building could be burning on the other side of the map and still reach the fire in time to put it out. That don't fly in my book. I reduced the stage times so any building outside of the fire stations radius is most likely going to collapse. But in turn to this, I've increased the fire stations radius to reflect a proper coverage for the fire station. So don't think I'm screwing everyone over. Needed to do this as well to keep the adviser happy with coverage. Since the coverage was reduced so drastically, the radius had to be increased anyways.

 

Spread Time & Spread Radius: With the increase in fires, things were getting a bit out of hand with the spreading, so I drastically cut back on the initial spread radius and increased the time between attempts to spread, to cut back on the craziness. However, the spread times and radii increase to normality after the first two stages, so the longer you let a fire burn, the more likely it will spread to the surrounding lots. 

 

To wrap it all up, it shouldn't be long before I can upload a "beta" version. I say "beta" only because I don't have a proper way of testing this mod on a large city (50k+ city pop/med tile). That means responding to the flames that follow the burning down of mayors cities.

 

FYI: This mod will certainly not be for those who care a lot for their buildings. With this mod, you are guaranteed to lose a building or two once in a while.   

[infamousjbe 592]

Forgot to add to the list of values that I've changed.

 

One of them is the 'efficiency vs funding' of the fire stations. Didn't like how the fire fighters started acting stupid when underfunded. In real life, fire fighters don't become stupid with putting out fires, they still do their jobs, but maybe not as efficiently. So I altered the fire station efficiency to allow under funding without such a negative effect. However, if you under fund the station too much, the fighters will still strike, and at that point, they will be complacent with putting out the fires. 

 

I did this because with the increase of fire severity, it's best to have more fire stations than usual. So to balance the budget drain from all the fire stations, you can now under fund the fire stations more than usual without them striking, or acting dumb when fighting the fires.

 

Think that's bout all I've changed so far, unless something else pops up that I've forgotten.

[Themaroonday 40]

I think this is a great idea. My fire department seems completely useless as I don't get many if not any fires at all. I think this would add more realism to the game and make the fire department more useful.

[Jim14409 448]

Been using a no fire dat for more years than I cann recall. As sme have stated I find the fires to be an interruption of my gameplay and not the responsibility of the mayor. I still place fire stations as they do offer benefit in just existing in the area.

[infamousjbe 592]

There are cases when all you'd have to do is pause the sim while you develop whatever it is you're working on, if you don't want to be interrupted.

 

But don't get me wrong, there are times when the fire happens at the worst possible moment. Cause quite frankly, who doesn't forget to pause the sim when they're developing.

 

Though the times it does happen, I usually have the ability to hit 'esc' before any damage is done. If anything major did happen, then I'd just have to back out to the region and reload the city without losing much development. The launcher is set for every 10 minutes (which in itself can also be disruptive) to help prevent any real lose.

 

 

Just for FYI reasons, I'm no longer trying to increase the amount of fires in the game per say, but when/if a fire breaks out, it can be anywhere, not just on the outside of the fire stations coverage radius. 

 

So by saying realistic fires, it's actually more of a fire station mod that allow the fires to ignite anywhere, even the fire station itself (and has happened to me a couple times now). 

 

To be honest, having the fires anywhere has been so much more entertaining (for me anyways), than just fires outside my coverage (lame)..... 

 

To be fare, by allowing the fires to ignite anywhere, does increase the occurrence naturally. 

 

However, I did boost this a bit by increasing the 'Summer Multiplier' exemplar factor, but only cause it didn't have any multiplication by Maxis default. That's not realistic IMO, so in turn that also does boost the occurrence, but by so little a factor that you wouldn't even notice.

 

There is a drawback to the mod, unless you know how to mod custom content, it won't work for download custom fire stations. Most likely the creator keep the specs the same or close to the default Maxis stations. The fire stations for the mod are "radically" modded (you could say). 

[CapTon 592]

I'd think this would be more UNrealistic rather than realistic. Sure, where I live (Cleveland), there are fires all the time, but they're not just randomly all over the place. Most of the time it's a factory and an occasional house.   

[infamousjbe 592]

We all have are believes, but are you really saying that the possibility of a fire happening anywhere is unrealistic? Your statement alone contradicts itself when you say factories and occasional houses.

 

So an office building in your area has never ever caught fire in it's history?

 

An arsonist could start a fire anywhere in your town, even the fire station itself. Do you see where I'm going with this?  

 

Plus real life fire stations don't have the ability to stifle fires in any way possible. There is no such thing. So how does taking that feature away from the fire stations in the game "unrealistic"?

 

Maybe with further explanation of what is "unrealistic" about the mod, I might understand you a bit better. 

[infamousjbe 592]

Mod is up for those who are interested in checking it out.

[infamousjbe 592]

ATTN: Mod Users.  I have the following request.  (cut/pasted from the mod page)

 

+==========+

|REQUEST      |

+==========+

If I may request, anyone using this mod, could you please state in the comments or linked (this) thread "any Maxis Rewards that seem to catch fire more/too frequent than the rest of the lots/bats". 

 

This will allow me to create a v.2 that reduces the flammability of the most annoying Maxis content.